Now that FFXIV has been released for the PC Collector's Edition, I figured I'd compile a list of the good, bad and ugly of it for those either waiting for the regular PC / PS3 versions or those not interested in it yet, but curious about it. Others can feel free to add stuff as well and I'll try to keep a tallied list:
The Good:
Gorgeous graphics
Faster paced combat
Very easy to solo
Very easy to get things done within minutes of logging in (no seeking for 3 hours to find a PT)
Crafting / Mining / Harvesting are all mini-games now, making them more fun
Bazaar / Muling is done via NPC now, no need to leave your character online or logout/login
Crystals/shards are held in a separate inventory and don't count against your inventory space
Skillups for crafting are essentially free through levequests. No more driving prices up on materials to skill up
The Bad:
Sluggish UI
Game is constantly lagged and doesn't handle lag well (needs more client-side processing)
NO instructions or tutorials... manual tells you how to install, set up billing and create a character and that's it.
Interactions are meddlesome and largely handled through several layers of sluggish menus beneath the main menu
HEAVY crafting focus (hope you like those crafting mini-games, you'll be doing them a lot)
Fishing is slower, clunkier, less fun than FFXI (but I'll leave Ennei to be the expert on that)
Fatigue builds fast, forcing you to divide your time between Melee, Mage, Gatherer, and Crafter jobs evenly
Half of the Levequests you can do every 2 days are for crafting, hope you REALLY like those minigames
Overcrowding already a problem. Hopefully people will thin out into higher level areas later on.
No delivery box system, items have to be hand delivered via trades
The Ugly:
NO AH, shopping consists of either going to unlabled vendors (who don't sell much) or using the sluggish UI to blindly go from Bazaar to Bazaar with your fingers crossed
No /search, no ability to see where friends / linkshell members are at all
Have to /t both first and last name and CTRL-R doesn't reply anymore, it sends a tell to the last person you sent a tell to
Crafting anything useful requires many ingredients themselves to be synthesized, creating a build tree often several layers deep, which can still result in several minutes to an hour of crafting only to have a failure losing EVERYTHING on the last synth
Several GLARING bugs that will hopefully be fixed over time
my only concern is i dont know how to make it fit the screen its always widescreen and i its too big for my monitor how do i make it fit the monitor arg!
ok i figured out how to fit the screen now how do i fight lol on FFXI they gave us emotes and junk and the /attack shit but here im lost lol i just wanna be a mooohoohoonk damn it this is fun lol
Claire wrote:ok i figured out how to fit the screen now how do i fight lol on FFXI they gave us emotes and junk and the /attack shit but here im lost lol i just wanna be a mooohoohoonk damn it this is fun lol
The silly UI makes it hard to figure out. Click on the mob and hit the key to change to active stance (not sure which key on the keyboard). Then something like a macro bar should show up at the bottom of the screen with only one icon in it. Keep clicking on that icon until it's dead. That's the easiest way can think to explain it but I use a gamepad.
There isn't any auto attack, so you have to keep selecting the attack you want until you're done.
One thing you shouldn't do is hit that icon that looks like a fancy S to the left of the macro bar. That puts you into regiment mode and your character won't so anything after that until you get back out of regiment mode.
Bracent wrote:Debating about even installing now....
We'd like to see you!
The crafting isn't all that bad, either. I think the lack of an AH is FAR worse. People are condemned to deal with the Lower Jeuno entrance type of marketplace as their ONLY solution for buying/selling stuff, and you get taxed on every sale regardless. It's the worst of both worlds. At least they kept it green not making us all keep our 750+ watt computers that the game requires running in order to sell stuff.
We'd like to see you!
its so much fun lol
